1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for transmitting and receiving information via wireless communication.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a scheme for setting up communication connections such as wireless local area network (LAN) or Bluetooth (registered trademark) connection with simple operations, called a handover, has been proposed. A handover is a process for switching from a short range communication protocol such as near-field communication (NFC), which devices use to exchange information necessary for authentication, such as configuration information, to a longer range communication protocol such as wireless LAN after such information has been exchanged.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-151746 proposes a technology for implementing switching of communication protocols. In the proposed technology, upon receiving a switch request in a handover attempt, an information terminal determines whether or not it is ready to support a target communication protocol, and, if it is determined that the information terminal is not ready to support the target communication protocol, the information terminal is made ready to support the target communication protocol, thereby implementing the switching to the target communication protocol.
In the technology proposed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2011-151746, if a communication partner device is not ready to support a target communication protocol, the information terminal is made ready to support the target communication protocol during a handover, thereby realizing the switching to the target communication protocol. However, the switching operation takes a certain amount of time. For example, if a long time is taken for the information terminal to get ready to support the target communication protocol, the information terminal may not be able to receive a response to a communication connection request for a continuous period of time. In this case, some information terminals may determine that the handover has failed if the number of retries exceeds a certain value.